Calibrating a Dual Monitor System...

[Scott Rosenberg]

hey guys,

i just purchased 2 lcd screens and am running them off a dual-screen capable video card. everything is working great, one screen is the primary with the windows desktop stretching onto the second. to calibrate the screens, i bought the eye-one display 2 gretagmacbeth system.

i ran the calibration profile on each of the two screens and saved the profiles as 'monitor 1' and 'monitor 2' thinking that i'd be able to apply the profiles to the proper screen. however, windows is only allowing me to set one profile, and in doing so, applies that profile to BOTH screens.

i'm running windows xp pro with a NVIDIA GEForce 6600GT vid card - i just downloaded the latest drivers, but that didn't seem to help. the screens are lacie lcds.

is there a way to set a unique profile for each screen?

how do you guys running dual screen systems calibrate the screens?

thanks,
scott

[Scott Rosenberg]

for anyone else with this problem, here's the solution:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=1E33DCA0-7721-43CA-9174-7F8D429FBB9E&displaylang=en

this let's you manage distinct profiles on each monitor. it's working for me so far.

scott

[Lazybones]

Windows. I'm just sayin'.

[Marko]

Scott,

Reading through the link you specified, it is still not clear to me whether this applet allows you to independently assign a profile per monitor, or if it simply lets you switch profiles.

As far as I know, you cannot independently profile two monitors at the same time under Windows, only the primary one, so perhaps you should make sure that you are not inadvertently switching profile for both monitors.

[Ken Lee]

As far as I have heard, the profile is applied to a "lookup table" in the graphics card. Accordingly, the only way to profile more than one monitor, is to have more than one graphics card... Is that true ?

[Scott Rosenberg]

marko,

the applet will absolutely allow you to have two seperate profiles - one assigned to each display as long as your video card is capable. obviously the simplest way to accomplish this is to just buy a cheap second card for the second display. my card was capable, so i didn't need to resort to that.

the easiest way to determine if your video card is able is to open the adobe gamma control panel - not wizard - and change the sliders. if the picture changes on only the screen that the adobe gamma window is in, then you're golden.

in addition to loading the aplet, you also must create a shortcut to the program in your startup folder . add a /L to the target so that the applet loads the profiles automatically at startup. if you've got another profile loader - i had the one that is included with the gretagmacbeth eye-one - you may have to remove that from the startup menu. since the gretagmacbeth profile loader CAN'T support distinct profiles, i removed it and instead let the microsoft applet take care of that.

i now have two perfectly matched lcd screens.

if you want more specific details, shoot me a note.

scott

[Marko]

Scott,

Thanks for the explanation. I don't really need more details, as I use a dual display only on my Mac. I just like to keep abreast of things like this, so I don't embarass myself.

:)

[Scott Rosenberg]

ken,

some video cards are able, some are not. from my nocturnal researchings last night, it seems like the ATI cards are universally better in this regard than the NVIDIA. however, after downloading the latest drivers from NVIDIA for my card, i'm able to do this. checking your card is quite straightforward in that you need only launch the adobe gamma control panel. play with the sliders and if both screens change, you're out of luck. if the screen with the adobe windows is the only one that changes, you're in good shape.

i'm sure that my system is runnnug two seperate profiles because i can switch them back and forth - profile 1 on screen 2 - and see a difference. also, there's a clever little app that you can download from the gretag site called display profile that will show you what profiles are available and what are active on the screen that the app is launched from.

scott

[bobc]

Thanks Scott for this info..

Even tho I have an old card (nVidia GeForce 5200), with the new driver and the applet, I'm able to calibrate both monitors.

But, since I have two different monitors, they are way different after calibrating. When I first hooked up the second monitor, I eyeballed the settings so that it would match my calibrated, primary monitor.

Looks like I'll have to run some prints off to see which one has 'true-er' colors. I'm not placing too much emphasis on my second monitor which I bought mainly to hold the palettes but I have put up a couple images at a time, one on each monitor to do some basic comparisons.

The secondary monitor is but a cheap Dell LCD. But, this brings up the question if my 4 year old Lacie electron blue (CRT) is now tired....

Yeah, I know: I was expecting too much having one monitor a CRT and the other an LCD...

[Ken Lee]

bobc - In what ways are the 2 monitors different ?

I can understand that a newer monitor may have a greater range of brightness and color saturation, but if you view a greyscale step-wedge, do both monitors render them neutrally ?

[Ken Lee]

On a related note: I have a Mac laptop. It allows you to hook up a second monitor, but I have been reluctant to try profiling the 2nd monitor, since I can't predict the results. My profile for the laptop itself, however, is fine.

[Kirk Keyes]

hey guys,

i just purchased 2 lcd screens

Scott - you're making me cry...

[Kirk Gittings]

Ken,

I just bought a new MacBook Pro. When in the office I will use a larger profiled Lacie 319 monitor and the Mac screen for tools. When on the road I will use the Mac screen for editing so both have to be calibrated. A friend of mine who is on the advisory board of Apple has his hooked up that way. He says it is simple. I just got the Mac today. The Lacie monitor is back ordered. When I figure it out I will let you know.

[ageorge]

On a related note: I have a Mac laptop. It allows you to hook up a second monitor, but I have been reluctant to try profiling the 2nd monitor, since I can't predict the results. My profile for the laptop itself, however, is fine.


The Mac color manages the built in LCD and an external one separately. With two monitors the Display Preferences pops up on both monitors an allows for separate ICC profiles to be used. I use the Spyder2PRO for profiling and it detects and lets you profile both monitors. It nice to see an image's color not change when moving it from one monitor to the other.

[Ken Lee]

Brilliant !!

I'm going to try this ASAP.

Thanks a ton !

[bobc]

Ken,
To answer your question, I did have to tone the brightness of the LCD monitor as it was way brighter than the CRT.

The differences are in the colors for one. Even when I make the brightness about equal, it appears that the colors on the LCD are more saturated.

With the step wedge, the LCD has brighter whites and darker blacks.

I did a screen capture to post because it is so evident but it doesn't show at all when I pasted it in PS. Now that I think about it, that makes sense....

So, here's a shot with a cheapo P&S. While the quality isn't there, the relative difference bewteen the primary CRT (left) and the LCD (right) is.

-bob

[Marko]

Bobc,

The whole point in callibrating your monitors is in having them display all the colors AND brightness levels the same. If they don't, it may be for two different reasons:

1. You haven't really callibrated nor profiled at least one of your monitors, or you have the wrong profile attached to it. Which device did you use for profiling?

2. Your operating system is not using the profiles. This may be the case under Windows, where only the ICC-aware applications such as Photoshop are making use of the profiles. If, as you say, you do not see the difference when you load screenshots in Photohshop, then this may indeed be the case.

Also, you may want to try and display those two screenshots within Photoshop but each on the screen from which it was taken and see if there is any difference.